


Take Up The Charge

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: And Being Likewise Wholly Enamoured of His Tiny Little Human, Collecting Data, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Parentlock, Schmoop, Sherlock Being a Bit Adorably Terrified of What It Means to Parent a Tiny Human, Sherlock Holmes and Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they talk about love, they talk about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Up The Charge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thescienceofobsession (ScienceofObsession)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/gifts).



> No, this is neither Britpicked nor beta'd. Yes, I named the kid Mary Elizabeth. No, there's no explaining where she came from. Yes, the fluff/schmoop is over the top. And in fact, yes again: this is the "grossest sappy sweet sentimental disgustingness you can muster"—E, I _promise_ you that.
> 
> No, I do not apologize for this. Not one little bit.

Even now, he has very little patience for that which has no clear utility.

As a child, it had been his tools, his experiments, his quest for knowledge and knowing and _better_ ; as a child, the only exception had been the dog.

Mycroft had sneered (predictable), Mummy had cooed (unbearable), but Sherlock had cared, and deeply so, for Redbeard. Beyond logic and reason. Outside function and progress. Had mourned him when he was gone. Holds him close in the most sacred place he keeps, then to now.

For the longest time, it had been the only experience he’d ever known of wanting, and grasping, and holding as detached from sense. The only thing held up against the Work without rotting in exchange.

Until the end, at least.

And then there’d been John. And John had been; John _remains_ : a revelation.

But John has utility. Alongside the feeling Sherlock holds from his entire being, John Watson exists to tangible avail within the world. Beyond their bedroom; outside of Sherlock’s arms.

This: this is different. This is not Redbeard, not even close. This is not John; similar, true, but terribly incomparable.

This is like, but unlike. This is known, but unknown. A challenge. A case. Familiar. Exhilarating.

Yes.

And yet this is _bigger_. This is brighter and bolder and strung through with fire and gold; this burns in his synapses and only settles like whiskey and wonder in the centre of his frame, between his ribs in a point to the left.

The flutter of lashes matches the flutter of her tiny pulse, and he can visualise the minuscule organ in his mind’s eye, all the perfect mystery of the order of the universe, contrived and conceived and made flesh before him: miraculous.

He detests that word. 

And _yet_.

He spends hours like this, marvelling. He never tires. When the though occurs to leave, to move, to _do_ , it is fleeting, and it is never a desire; no, more of a passing whim, a curiosity aimed at both the fact that the idea hasn’t stirred him yet, drawn alongside the horror that it ever should. 

Because this is paramount. There is nothing more pressing, more necessary than this.

He watches her small frame, the tiny curl of fingers, the sweet heft of breaths: he collects the data of her very being and weaves it like a canticle, notes to the song of the cosmos, and he has very little patience for that which has no clear utility; yet she makes him feel invincible beneath the heavens. She makes him feel overburdened with what it means to breathe in air. She makes him feel energy in his veins and tenderness in whatever passes for a soul and she is mesmerising, she is terrifying, she is whole and the closest thing to god that Sherlock thinks he’s ever seen. She makes him foreign to himself. She helps him fit his own skin in a way he’s never known.

And that is clearer than utility could ever touch: it is more. It is purpose.

It is _right_.

___________________________________

“Impossible.”

John’s tired. John has no pressing excuse for _being_ tired—not today, at least, and the proof of it is in the muttering mound of disheveled loon currently curled up on the sofa, their infant daughter held tight to his chest, wrapped up in his dressing gown, but only to her middle.  
“It’s not _possible_ ,” Sherlock’s murmuring, babbling, but all at just the proper cadence, just the particular decibel that John suspects Sherlock’s deduced to be most agreeable to the child in his arms. “I’ve just misplaced it, obviously, I need to, I just...”

“What are you going on about?” John asks, fumbling for the kettle. 

“I need to go.” Sherlock’s frowning down at the baby on his chest, but is making no progress toward moving; doesn’t look like he’d be willing to jostle her for anything less than a fire in the flat. “To look for it, to search it out, I—”

“Sherlock,” John sighs long, and tells himself that he’s got to let the water warm anyway, so there’s nothing lost in taking the time to simultaneously talk his partner down from whatever nonsense he’s worked himself up to. 

“You’re gonna need to breathe, first, before you _go_ anywhere.”

He points it out flatly, stares as pointedly as the hour allows him. Sherlock takes a few moments to catch up, eyes widening only when his tiny charge beginning to stir, apparently unsettled by the shift in the lulling rise-and-fall of the chest-bed she finds herself occupying.

“Yes,” Sherlock whispers, the sound barely a sound as he schools his inhale into a smooth susurration, only satisfied to speak when she’s settled. “Right, that. Yes.”

Breathing. John pauses his own to listen for the kettle: not ready just yet.

“Now,” John stifles a yawn. “Try again. What’s got you in a fit?”

“I can’t _place_ it, John!” Sherlock hisses between teeth, low and soft as he can. “I can’t, and you know, you know that I never _can’t_ —”

“Breathing,” John says pointedly, when he sees the little face atop Sherlock’s chest begin to frown. “What in god’s name can you not place?”

And John should not be surprised, really, when Sherlock nods frantically down to the small body tucked beneath his chin.

“ _This_!”

In truth, John is not surprised.

“Our child.”

“Not _our child_ ,” Sherlock rolls she eyes dramatically. “Her,” and he gestures futilely with the hand not splayed across her back, tracing endless calming circles. He leans, and he breaths in deep, and he pulls back so that his exhale won’t rustle the tiny tuft of blonde atop her head.

The water’s boiling, which means it’s too hot already. And it’s _early_ , so it takes John a minute to put it all together, the pleading eyes and the breathing and the whatnot.

“The way she _smells_?”

Sherlock huffs at John’s incredulity, but it’s an affirmation if John’s ever going to get one. 

“It’s impossible,” Sherlock spouts off; “it’s impossible, but I cannot _catalogue_ it.” “You know that I can identify—”

“Yes, yes, your ashes and perfumes and eau d’whatnots, I am well aware,” John shakes his head, and hides the smirk that threatens to overcome him because only Sherlock; only _Sherlock_.

He’s saved from a giggle by another wide yawn, and John’s not above a bit of trickery to get what he wants, after all. And what he wants is his tea and to go straight back to sleep.

“I think exposure’s probably going to be best, here,” John advises, puts on his very best tone of sage physician’s wisdom “You just lie there with her and see if you can’t figure it out, hmm?”

It’s a testament to just how tired, just how strung out Sherlock must be that it works on him in the first place.

It’s proof further still when John emerges from the kitchen with his mug to see Sherlock’s chest, and their daughter still cradled safe against it, lifting deep with the cadence of sleep.

And because he’s asleep, John allows himself the laughter.

Sherlock’s nose is tilted just above the crown of that little head, baby-fresh and genius-baffling.

John chuckles all the way back to the bedroom, sipping his tea and weighing whether he should save Sherlock the few minutes of googling and just out and tell him what science says that infant-scent’s really made of.

He decides in favour of the mattress, in any case.

___________________________________

“Take after the heart of him.”

It’s not late, precisely, but Sherlock’s never been one for predictable hours. Hence: John is rocking the little one back and forth, lulling her back to sleep across from her father, who is currently occupying his trademark position—sprawled limbs-akimbo over the entire sofa.

“And the tenacity, the way he fights, the,” John doesn’t know what spurs him to whisper to her, like this, but from the first night he’s done it. Murmured the secrets of the world that he knows, told her his hope for her, mused on the future. 

“The ferocity in his soul,” John finally settles on the word. “Take after that, too.”

She huffs, all open mouthed and wide-eyed, bow-lips pouted up at him in earnest. John grins side and kisses her forehead.

“His curiosity,” he picks back up. “His wonder, but don’t ever try to stifle it, don’t ever think it makes you weak,” he cautions, as if she can understand, and maybe she knows something in it, maybe she can feel the strength in the words or the gleam in his eye. 

It’s for the maybe that he keeps going.

“I think he’s afraid of how much the world astounds him, sometimes. Never hide from the way that the universe sometimes leaves you in awe.”

She wriggles, just a little, but John will take that as permission to proceed.

“But take after his drive, his vision, the way he protects what’s his and doesn’t let go. Those are good things, love,” John nuzzles the tip of his nose like angel’s-breath at the soft silk of her hair. “Your Da over there, he’s built of good things.”

Sherlock takes the opportunity to snore, just then, and John can’t help but snort.

“But _whatever_ you do, Mary Elizabeth,” John stares their daughter straight in the eye: “Do _not_ take after his sleeping habits.”

She yawns, and John grins, and he thinks that babies are joy, really. It’s not just a saying. John believes that their Mary, here, might just be made out of joy.

“Ta, yes,” John smoothes a hand across her back as she starts to drift. “I’ll accept your taking after his horrid attention span when I’m speaking for the nap.”

She’s out within minutes; Sherlock doesn’t stir. It’s nearly noon.

John’s content to sit and just watch them, to soak in this unthinkable thing that is _his_.

“Yeah,” he breathes out, still not used to it all; still only half-believing this is where they are; what they are.

“Yes. That’s a fair swap.”

___________________________________

“There are two of us for a reason,” John holds the phone to his shoulder to muffle the conversation. “She can stay here with her Daddy for the night while you catch the baddies, can’t you darling?” John crouches to where Sherlock’s teaching Mary quantum mechanics, for all John can tell, on the blanket Mrs. Hudson gave them when she came home. 

“Hmmm.”

John doesn’t think it’ll ever get old, this: all of it.

Least of which, the way that Sherlock treats their life, here, like the most perfect case he’s ever tried to solve.

The way Sherlock doesn’t seem so keen on solving it at all, really; isn’t in any rush to see it end.

“Lestrade says it’s an eleven,” John adds, just to see if it works.

“Which is actually an eight,” Sherlock scoffs, never taking his eyes off Mary’s own fascinated gaze as he presents her with colors blocks in what John suspects is some complex pattern that Sherlock is convinced will reveal something crucial about Mary’s cognitive development. “At best.”

“Still,” John shrugs. “Eight’s good.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything for a long stretch of moments. Mary watches him, and almost grins, just a flash of gums.

“Call the government,” Sherlock tells John, because god forbid he use his brother’s given name. “Otherwise, the incompetents at Scotland Yard can earn their keep tonight.”

“You call,” John shoots back, tossing the phone to Sherlock with Lestrade still on the line as he crouches down and grabs for the blocks, Mary’s attention following the colourful bricks. “I’m busy, now.”

Sherlock looks utterly scandalised at John’s usurpation of their daughter’s undivided affections. John cackles, which—this time—stretches Mary’s smile out full.

Sherlock won’t admit it aloud, of course, but John suspects they both believe that that smile’s more than worth it.

___________________________________

“I love you.”

“I’m aware.”

“I love you.”

Sherlock sighs. 

“I make a standing exception for that declaration,” he says carefully, not bothering to turn toward John where he stands behind him. “But I feel inclined to remind you that repetition is, in fact, quite dull.” 

“I love you,” John says again, “and I trust you with my life,” and that’s nice, but again: something Sherlock already knows. 

“And I am therefore going to give you the benefit of the doubt when I ask you what kind of experiment you’re conducting, exactly, with our daughter fastened onto your chest.”

Sherlock glances down at Mary, who’s staring up at him, almost expectantly. Sherlock is well aware of what the research says about her visual and neurological capacities, but he has good reason to believe she exceeds the benchmarks of her cohort. 

He suspects that she’s just as put off by John’s interruption of their study as Sherlock is himself.

“Less experiment, more training,” Sherlock concedes, putting down the spoon in his hand and returning it to the jar labeled _Sample Twelve_.

“All paediatrician approved, I assure you, though I continue to disagree with the association of authority with such affiliation,” Sherlock pauses, readjusting the carrier straps while trying not to disturb the way that Mary’s settled up against him. “No offence meant to your noble profession, of course. But these particular samples are not only nutritious and absolutely innocuous, but they have been selected specifically to begin honing Mary’s sense of taste, and cultivating a natural aversion to flavour profiles that occur in common poisons.”

John blinks at him, and Sherlock’s more than gotten used to that particular expression from his lover.

“Safety first, John,” he smirks and returns to Sample Thirteen. 

Mary gurgles happily, and that’s more than good enough for him.

___________________________________

It’s not that John was looking for it. More that it’s difficult to miss. Because Sherlock rarely _writes_ things. You know. On _paper_ and such.

“What is this?”

Sherlock also rarely looks so god awfully dumbstruck. Evening of novelties it is, then. 

“Just,” Sherlock shifts, eases the door so it’s open just a crack, so they’ll hear when Mary wakes: “data.”

“Mmm,” John nods; he can tell that much. Numbers. Tally marks. Squiggles of various natures. “What sort?”

“Observational.”

John glances upward, unimpressed.

“I suppose it qualifies as longitudinal, as well.”

John continues to be unimpressed. It’s a recurrent theme with the love of his life. 

Of course it is.

Sherlock sighs, and takes the notebook from John’s hands, sitting heavily on the bed with only just enough room for John to join him.

And join him John does.

“You think she favours me,” Sherlock begins, and John laughs.

“I _know_ she favours you.”

Sherlock grins, just a touch too rueful as he flips pages and opens the book to be seen.

“Food preferences,” he stretches those long musician's fingers out to crack at the knuckles, tracing down the charts and notations: foreign to John’s eye, but full of meaning under the right gaze.

“You always give her the carrots,” Sherlock muses, following a row to the eighty-ninth column; “She likes the mushy peas.”

John cocks his head, but Sherlock reads the question before he can ask it: “By which I mean, she sleeps on average seventy-three minutes longer before she needs someone to change her nappy.”

“And by someone,” John interjects with a long-suffering sort of air; “you mean me,”

“Not a requirement,” Sherlock shrugs, all nonchalance, but John knows the twitch of his cheek for the smile it hides. “A happy accident, we’ll call it.”

“Of course we will.”

“I gain you an hour’s extra rest, you take care of the aftermath of dinner.”

John ponders that, and will absolutely not admit that he’ll wager it as an even exchange.

“Mushy peas.” It’s an innocuous comment, but Sherlock’s lips curl just a little, so John knows he reads the concession in John’s face somehow.

Fucking prat.

“Precisely.”

Sherlock clears his throat, and seems to waver before he flips the page, again, once more, and reveals tabulated strings of numbers and qualifiers, superscripts and indicative arrows pointing at god knows what, but John’s not left to wonder long.

“Breaths,” Sherlock murmurs, revealing the secret in his own self as he points to the colour-coded lines. “Heartbeats, the pitch of her cries,” his voice stumbles through a crack to a soft register, a lower tone: “The number of times she smiles in a given day.”

John’s heart aches at the sound of his voice, and the proof of a heart in the confession, spilled on paper: ripe for burning, yet wholly unmarred.

“She’s,” Sherlock starts, stumbles. “She’s so very small, John.” He meets John’s eyes, his own far too bright. “Innocent, breakable.” Sherlock looks away, worrying his lower lip as he exhales: “Infinitely precious.”

John says nothing, because he might be the blogger, but he’s not one for words. Not for things like this.

“Any number of missteps,” Sherlock starts again, an edge of madness seeping into each phrase; “the blink of an eye and she might, there might be, we…”

John reaches, and covers Sherlock’s hand where it rests upon his notes, the life slumbering in the next room charted with a care that might look cold to anyone else, but to them, for them: John sees what it is. What it means.

How _much_ it _means_.

“To be certain of her, as best I can,” Sherlock whispers: “is essential.” He frowns, shakes his head, caught somehow halfway between ducking it in embarrassment, and raising his chin in defiance. 

“Don’t bother telling me it doesn’t make any sense.”

“I wouldn’t,” John shakes his head in turn. “I would never.”

He strokes his thumb across the curve of Sherlock’s wrist, and leans to press his lips to the line of his jaw as he breathes:

“It makes all the sense in the world.”

Sherlock stills, tenses; even now, still braces for mocking, but John won’t let that stand.

Absolutely not.

“This is what it looks like, you understand,” John twines their hands so that when he spreads his fingertips to encompass the pages, the project, the feeling, Sherlock’s own hand follows suit. 

“It looks like us, and her, and this book with the milk stain on the cover and all of your meticulous data,” he smiles; can’t help it. “It looks like the world. _Your_ world.”

There’s a fire in Sherlock’s eyes, John can see it. There’s a fire there, just the first sparks, and it’s deciding whether to bank or blaze. 

“It’s what _love_ looks like, Sherlock,” and that’s all it takes to stoke those flames. “When they talk about love, they talk about this.”

The heat is maddening, and breathtaking when Sherlock leans to kiss him. It tastes of cinnamon and the haze on the Thames, and promise—not disappointment—when a soft cry from the other side of the door rings out and eases them apart. John makes to stand, hand lingering at Sherlock’s neck, but Sherlock stops him, eases him back to the bed and presses lips to the center of his forehead as he stands to go, to rock her back to sleep.

“Let me.”

John grins as Sherlock slips through the door, the image, the moment, the feeling somehow sweet on the air, and true enough, then.

When they talk about love, they really do talk about _this_.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com), as ever.


End file.
